No one has been jailed on charges in the three slayings, and no motives have been established, Duran said. He said investigators continue looking for and interviewing witnesses in all the cases.

“We have looked at all the cases and we don’t believe these three are related to each other,” Duran said. He said it appears that gangs were involved in the Lincoln Park case, but not in the other two.

Police said Batiste had gotten out of jail the day before he was gunned down on 50th Street in Lincoln Park. He and several other young men were standing in an apartment complex walkway when he was shot about 2:45 p.m. Witnesses saw the other men run. Duran said Batiste was known to police as a gang member, and investigators believe he was shot by a member of his own gang.

That night, a shooting was reported at 8:14 p.m. on 33rd Street in Logan Heights. A pedestrian saw that the victim, Wilson, had been talking to someone in a dark car, then shots were fired from the car and it was driven away, Duran said.

Duran said Wilson, who had a criminal history, was living in a downtown shelter.

On Saturday, White and two male companions finished watching a football game on TV and were in the garage at an Alderly Street home in Encanto just before 8 p.m. when someone in a dark vehicle drove by and opened fire on the three. White was shot in the back, Duran said.

White’s cousin, Taneashia Sudds, 38, of Tacoma, Wash., described him as a well-loved young man.

“He had a lot of medical complications and surgeries after he was born,” Sudds said. “We didn’t know whether he was going to survive. He was so happy, so loving. He was very outgoing, very athletic.”

Pauline Repard • U-T

Suspect in 3 1980s L.A. murders served time for S.D. sex crimes

San Diego

A suspected serial killer charged Monday in the cold-case murders of three women in Los Angeles also preyed on two women in San Diego in the 1980s.

Samuel Little, 72, a career criminal, lived in San Diego in 1984 before moving to Los Angeles. He was convicted in San Diego of rape, assault, unlawfully violating the personal liberty of another by violence, menace, fraud and deceit stemming from incidents on Sept. 27, 1984, and Oct. 25, 1984.

In Los Angeles, he was recently linked by DNA to the deaths of three women, ages 35 to 41, said Los Angeles police Detective Mitzi Roberts. One Los Angeles victim was killed in July 1987, and the other two were found murdered in August and September 1989, Roberts said.